How to Learn About Modern Agriculture, Crafts and Home Economics in a German Colony: The Case of German Togo

While German vocational education and training (VET) has long since received international attention for its dual system of partly school, partly company-based teaching and learning, the history of VET in the German colonies remains a neglected research area to date. The focus on informal education and learning in German colonies is even more challenging, since most research, if existing, centres around formal colonial and missionary education. The article will take the example of Togo in Western Africa in the boundaries under German colonial dominance from 1884 till the First World War. The author outlines two approaches to the topic: First, the general philosophy of education for work is discussed, since it is conceived as the overall background to all informal education and learning in colonial times including its influence on the evolving formal colonial education system. Secondly, existing trainings for manual work in German Togo will be depicted in the three fields of agriculture, crafts & trades, and female household chores, since they were overwhelmingly operating in nonformal or informal ways, even if called a school. All in all, informal VET in German Togo mainly meant the transmission of ‘modern’ type competences and attitudes deemed apt to render the colony economically viable and profitable.